Sheffield drama teacher banned for life after giving perverted story to 12-year-old pupil

Chris Burn

A Sheffield drama teacher has been banned from teaching for life after writing a story about a man having sex with underage girls that he gave to a 12-year-old female pupil.

John Salway, 67, who taught at private boarding school Mount St Mary’s College, Spinkhill, near Sheffield, wrote a piece that included references to a man taking part in sex acts with 15 and 12-year-old girls.

He admitted to a disciplinary panel he had written the piece, called ‘Story’, ‘as a sexual fantasy for my own private gratification’.

He brought the story into school, where it was read by a 12-year-old girl who found it in a new workbook she was given in February 2014.

The parents of the Year 7 pupil gave the story to the school’s headmaster Dr Nicholas Cuddihy.

The panel heard the story had caused ‘considerable distress’ to the pupil and her parents.

Salway, who had previously been a teacher at Birley Community College in the 1990s and 2000s, had started at the school in 2011 on a part-time basis and was made a permanent member of staff in September 2012.

He had said it was ‘not intentional’ that the story was given to the pupil and could not account for how it had got into the workbook. But the National College of Teaching and Leadership panel said this was ‘highly unlikely’ and his conduct had been sexually motivated.

Alan Meyrick, deputy director of the NCTL, said: “Mr Salway wrote a story which itself evidenced a deep seated and harmful attitude to children.”

He said that the NCTL disciplinary panel had found that Salway ‘deliberately caused a young pupil to read this story causing distress to her and to her parents’.

He added: “The evidence in this case points to a deep seated harmful attitude towards pupils. I support the panel and have decided that Mr Salway should not be given any opportunity to apply for restoration of his eligibility to teach.”